


Don't Leave Out the Good Part

by GoldStarGrl



Category: Justified
Genre: Angst, Biting, First Kiss, Kitchen Sex, M/M, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2020-03-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:29:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22933342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoldStarGrl/pseuds/GoldStarGrl
Summary: Boyd gets out of prison after eight and a half years. Honestly, he’s surprised it took him that long, he was aiming for five.
Relationships: Boyd Crowder/Raylan Givens, past Ava Crowder/Boyd Crowder - Relationship
Comments: 9
Kudos: 124





	1. Chapter 1

_If you're gonna tell them everything  
Tell 'em I'm a good kisser  
Tell 'em all the things you told me  
In your desperate whisper  
If you're gonna tell them everything  
Don't leave out the good part. _

_– Good Kisser, Lake Street Drive_

Boyd gets out of prison after eight and a half years. Honestly, he’s surprised it took him that long, he was aiming for five.

He’s a model prisoner, this time around. He has his church, he reads so much he actually has to send out for more books through some good-doer liberal donation program. Most important, he hasn’t had one write up since the day they dumped him in Tramble with blood all over his neck and a brain so numb from heartbreak and shock he couldn’t make trouble if he wanted to.

Or maybe he’s just getting older.

Ironically, though, what finally gets him out, on his first attempt for parole nobody including Jesus Christ thought he was going to get, was _overcrowding_. 

“Well,” he said, the whisper of a smile. “It is in my name.”

They stick him with an insanely long parole to make up for it, tell him he can’t get out of Harlan County without permission until he’s in his eighties. He talks his way out of that, too. Can’t stand to see the hills, the way every weather-beaten face looks like his kin or Ava’s. 

God, Ava.

If he has to spend one more day in this place he’s going to puke down the front of his shirt. So he finds a way to bribe his P.O. (or threaten him, depending on how much he cares about his children’s college funds and their ability to get drained at anytime) and takes off. 

In a life that’s closer to fifty than forty, he’s lived in Kentucky and Iraq. End of list. He has no clue where to go, he just knows there’s got to be a lot out there that’s better than where he’s been.

He visits the Northeast, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and they have the best colleges and kickass libraries but shit weather. No matter how eloquent he is he can tell all anyone is doing is smirking at his accent. _White trash, hillbilly, inbred redneck_. He can feel the words like they're tattooed on his skin.

He goes to a temple in southern New Jersey and actually meets some Jews for the first time in his life, and they’re just _people_ , with services not that different from the boring Catholic ones he saw in prison and he feels so uncomfortable and _stupid_ he bolts after fifteen minutes and gets shitfaced at a bar and vows to never take off his jacket in company for the rest of his life.

He likes Alabama okay, meets up with a couple local Crowder cousins to put his feet in Mobile Bay and stare out at the horizon. They ask him about that pretty blonde girl they heard he was marrying. He just keeps drinking his beer, silent while a fist squeezes his heart. By daybreak the next morning, he’s back on the road.

He sleeps with a woman with wild red hair in St. Louis. He sleeps with a man a foot taller than him outside of Dallas. He works odd jobs, cleans office buildings and shucks oysters and drives forklifts. He goes to church a lot, but he doesn’t really like being the one in the pews, not up on the pulpit. He wishes he had something to testify about. 

He sells drugs, minor shit like weed and pills, but he despises answering to someone else’s operation. One of the lookouts bitches to him about how he hates posting up in the D.C. subways, can’t stand being underground. He laughs and steals all the cash out of the kid's wallet.

He ends up in Miami, thinking vaguely of working out a minor cocaine game, or at least buying some to get him out of his own head for awhile, when he sees Winona Hawkins coming out of a restaurant with a little girl.

Any fool could see she was Raylan’s, that sandy hair and sharp, inquisitive eyes. Boyd almost forgets to breathe, and ducks into an alley, staring pointedly at the wall for five minutes, ten, until he’s sure they’ve left the area.

He hasn’t seen Raylan in almost five years, since he came to the prison to tell him about Ava, about…the end of everything. He doesn’t really remember saying goodbye, just something about digging coal, being led back to his cell. Raylan’s smile. He’d looked good. He always did, but even more than usual that day. Less wound-up and worried. Like he’d been glad to drop his trouble’s into Boyd’s lap and run. 

Prison doesn’t offer a lot of places for privacy, but he’d had a key to the chapel for his services, special privilege. Electronic, they probably wouldn’t have given him anything sharp. He used it to swipe in and spend two hours under the pulpit, forehead pressed into his knees. One hour is for crying, the second for getting any evidence of that behavior to fade from his face. He might’ve been a man of the cloth again, protected to a certain extent, but he still wasn’t that big and didn’t need anyone to see him with red eyes.

Ava was dead. Raylan was gone. One-two punch. It had knocked the wind out of him for years, and some days he still didn't think he'd really caught his breath.

He’s not gonna go looking for the one still breathing. He’s gonna get out of Miami, maybe give the West Coast a try. Ava used to tease him that that blinding grin of his was made for the big screen. 

He’s not gonna go chasing old ghosts.

He finds Raylan’s address in a directory for his daughter’s school with a cursory internet search at the library. Willa Givens. She’s in 3rd grade. He wonders if she’s smart like Raylan was, at that age.

He hopes she's got a little kick to her. Hopes she gives him hell sometimes, he deserves nothing less.

He’s not going to go see him. He’s not just going to show up on his front door without a plan or even a gun, Boyd Crowder _always_ has a plan.

But he’s never been good at denying himself the things he wants. And it’s fucking Florida, it takes him like fifteen minutes to get a pistol.


	2. Chapter 2

Boyd posts up in a bus shelter across the street from Raylan’s condo, the warm summer breeze ruffling palm trees. By the time a car pulls into the driveway, it’s almost nine at night and there’s still a glowing sunset. He can see why Raylan was so grumpy leaving this place, so eager to get back. 

He still dresses the same, tight button-ups and jeans that show off those long legs. There’s a grocery bag tucked under his arm and that black hat on his head. More gray in his hair, but it suits him. Very few things don’t suit a man who looks like Raylan.

Something stirs in a part of Boyd’s chest he thought had gone extinct with Ava.

Raylan locks his car with a beep, winds up the walkway to his front steps and shakes out his house key.

“I’d’ve bet good money they’d be able to hold you at least ten years.” He calls across the street, casual as anything. Doesn’t turn around.

Boyd knows he should tamp down the grin splitting across his face. He doesn’t try very hard. “Well, Raylan, I’ve always been an overachiever.” 

“Mm, hold all kinds of records in prison?”

“Sure,” Boyd walks languidly across the quiet street, his boots echoing on the pavement. “Most books read in a year, the biggest congregation accrued.”

“Most identity crises in a single lifetime?” Raylan opens his front door and steps inside. 

Doesn’t close it behind him. 

Boyd braces his hand inches from the gun tucked in his waistband, and walks up the stairs. 

“Haven’t you ever read your psychology? You gotta learn about addictive personalities.” _Add-dick-tiviv purr-son-al-i-tees._ He relishes in too many syllables, in letting his accent out stronger than he has in months. 

Raylan starts transferring a quart of ice cream and a few other essentials into to the refrigerator. “Find something to identify with?”

“You know how our daddies drank, snorted all the coke this side of the Mississippi, Lord knows they couldn’t resist hitting. I bring that passion to better vices, to everything I come upon in this life.” The air conditioning in Raylan’s entryway washes over him like a cleansing wave. He’d been sweating bad.

Raylan finishes putting away his groceries and sits down at the kitchen table. “I just thought you had yourself a real bad attitude. Maybe some ADD.” 

Boyd leans against the doorframe. “Six of one.”

“You know, I don’t recall inviting you in.”

“Come now, you’re the king of nonverbal communication.”

Raylan doesn’t smile. “You wanna pull first or should I?” 

They move in unconscious tandem, like they’ve always done. Raylan’s got his gun pointing over the tabletop; Boyd’s aiming from the hip. 

“You really come all this way to talk addiction with me?” Raylan asks. 

Boyd sighs. “No.”

“So what? Just walk into my kitchen and take me out like you promised? You really think that would work? You’re a lot of things, but you ain’t stupid. ”

“No.”

“You’re lucky my daughter wasn’t here tonight, I’d’ve put you down ‘fore you had a foot off the sidewalk.”

“Raylan, do you realize you’re doing some mighty big assuming while I’ve become rather taciturn?” Boyd puts his gun down the back of his jeans and sits too. “I’d never lay a finger on that child, you really think so little of me?” 

He scratches his arms, skin pink from the too-bright sun. He’d changed into the biggest t-shirt he could find, with sleeves that flopped down to his elbows and hid every tattoo but the barbed wires on his forearms, but he still felt overheated, about to bust out of his body. 

Raylan squints at him, pulls his gun off the table (but still holds it ready in his lap). “Get some bowls from the cabinet behind you.” 

Boyd blinks. “Pardon?”

“I had plans to have some ice cream tonight, and your presence ain’t changing that. Spoons in the first drawer.”

Boyd finds himself smiling again, at half power this time, and gets out two bowls, ostensibly at gunpoint. One of them is clearly Willa’s, the redheaded mermaid princess cartoon printed on the bottom. He sets it in front of Raylan. “You know, ice cream is highly coveted in prison.”

“Mhmm.” Raylan plops one scoop of mint chocolate chip in Boyd’s bowl and much more in his own. 

“We got those great sandwiches, you know? Wrapped in paper, vanilla ice cream in the center?”

“I remember.” Raylan took a few quiet bites. His lips were turning redder from the chill as they came off the spoon.

“There's chocolate wafers in place of bread.” Boyd prepares to launch into a retelling of how he got his congregation to pay him a tithe of their best desserts – all he has is prison stories, all he has are little victories since the last time they saw each other, since everything inside him _broke_.

“I know what ice cream sandwiches are.” Raylan's looking at him strange.

“Right, forgot I was talking to College over here.” He digs one of the little chips out of the ice cream, but just lets it rest on the tip of his spoon. 

Raylan’s still staring, the expression easier to name. Like Boyd’s an _idiot._

“Your mama used to bring them to the church picnic, Boyd.” 

And Boyd _remembers._

What Frances and his own mama had in common, besides their shit husbands and low circumstances, was dragging their sons to First Baptist every Godforsaken week. That’s what good Harlan women did. It made them seem respectable, the Givens and Crowders couldn’t be _that_ nefarious if they were showing up with potato salads.

And it kept their boys out of trouble, more or less.

Bowman’d run off to torture younger kids and the odd animal after services. Boyd would end up smoking somewhere quiet. Raylan stuck to his mama’s side, looking pensive and handsome and bored. 

The two of them said hello sometimes. Helped with folding chairs if they were in a good mood, silently passed around apple-pie shine in a ring of underage solidarity when they weren’t. A few times they chucked a football as far as they could, get Bowman to run off after it when he was being annoying.

Most of their lives, they were closer to friends than not.

The summer before sixth grade, Boyd spent most Sundays hiding behind the church to avoid helping with the food. He was too hot and his family was getting up his ass and he just wanted to go to the hunting cabin and set off the Roman candles he got off his cousin. 

Being alone soothed his frayed nerves, a little, but he barely avoided jumping when Raylan swung around the back corner unexpectedly, freckly and too tall, long arms and legs still waiting for his body to catch up. 

“Your mama said to bring you one of these.” He tossed Boyd a wrapped ice cream sandwich and leaned against the clapboard back wall of the church, trying for tough. This effect was lessened as he took a bite out of his own. 

Boyd caught it, feeling the cold bleed through to the pads of his fingers. He stubbed out his cigarette and peeled back the paper. “You do whatever my mama tells you?”

“She says you’re pissy, needed a reminder to be sweet.” Boyd felt his cheeks heat up, but Raylan rolled his eyes, barely noticing. “‘Sides, you’re skinny as shit, you need all the fattening up you can get.” 

“Oh am I?” Boyd knew he was supposed to punch him, or at least knee him in the stomach for insulting him and by extension, the entire Crowder clan. But then Raylan would fuck off. And he didn’t want that, today. 

“Yeah. But it’s okay.”

They sat in companionable silence for a few minutes, listening to the flies buzz and adults shriek.

“You’re no beauty queen yourself,” he tried, finally. Couldn’t even convince himself. 

Raylan finished his sandwich, licked the remnants off his fingers without breaking eye contact. “You’re a real bad liar, Boyd Crowder.” 

It was hard to tell who kissed who. It was fast, both of them springing back maybe two seconds after their lips touched. Even the toughest men among us were once twelve. 

Raylan tasted like vanilla ice cream. _Something sweet._

Boyd dropped his sandwich on the ground. Raylan stepped backwards, towards the lawn, towards their town. Looking far too pleased with himself.

Back in the kitchen, decades and states away, he’s still wearing that smug face.

Boyd drops his spoon in his bowl with a clatter. “Can’t believe you remember that.”

“I do.”

“Thought it’d’ve gotten buried under your escapades with every woman south of the Mason-Dixon.”

Raylan takes another bite. “May not be known as a romantic, but I note the big stuff.”

“The big stuff?” The penny drops. “You mean to tell me I had the honor of giving Raylan Givens his first kiss?” 

Raylan’s eyebrows pump up in confirmation. He’s not embarrassed. Boyd laughs, kicking back in his chair. He feels lighter than he has in weeks. 

“Goddamn. Thought there were no more surprises left for me in this life.”

“Don’t get cocky, you set a low bar.” He picks up the bowls, his cleaned out, Boyd’s barely touched, and put them in the sink. “Had your old teeth then, needed a lesson or two in brushing.” 

“I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were trying to provoke me.” Raylan makes a noise under the water that could be mistaken for a chuckle. “Your little girl a heartbreaker yet?"

Raylan turns off the spout. He leans his back against the lip of the sink, crosses his arms. The gun is pointing at the wall now. Boyd’s sure they both realize that. “She’s not even allowed to start thinking about that for ten more years. Fifteen, maybe.”

He slides out of his seat, coming to stand in the middle of the kitchen. “That sounds like a fine plan, Raylan.”

“I thought so.”

“You gonna tell her about your adventures kissing hillbilly boys back in the holler? Might scare her off a little longer.” He smiles, big as ever, but it doesn't quite reach his eyes. 

“What are you looking for, Boyd?” Raylan asks. Boyd takes a step forward, go for the gun or put a hand on Raylan’s hip. He’s too old to be feeling this lost. 

“Where’s Ava buried?” He asks, hoping it doesn't sound as pathetic out loud as it does in his ears. 

Raylan reacts less than when they were talking about their childhoods. The man is a statue, but better looking and more infuriating. “ _Ava_ ’ _s_ not buried anywhere. Caroline Dean’s down somewhere in Texas.”

Another step forward. “I went to Texas, couldn’t find her headstone.”

“It’s a big state.”

“The internet makes it much smaller.” Closer, closer.

“Well Boyd, I can’t say I have all the details. Staties processed the accident.”

“Bullshit.” 

His hand closes around the barrel of the gun. Raylan catches his wrist, holds it hard in the slim space between their chests. Both of them are breathing harder than they should be.

“You ain’t ever come across a case you don’t turn over every stone to finish. You know."

"Boyd-"

"How about you swear on your daughter's life that you don't know?" 

Raylan says nothing. There’s copper in the back of his throat, did he bite himself? Gonna give up and just bleed?

“I never thought of you as a cruel man, Raylan Givens.”

Raylan shakes his head, casts a rueful glance sideways, at something far away. “You don’t know half as much as you think you do.” 

He tugs Boyd by the wrist, closing the space between them. Lips as cold and sweet as he remembers. Boyd pushes him harder against the counter, vaguely aware they’re still holding a gun in their twisted up hands. 

Nobody’s pulling away this time.


	3. Chapter 3

Because Boyd has always found himself very impressive, he’s never had any hang-ups about being with men as well as women.

Not like he broadcast his varied preferences in Harlan – he had enough of a target on his back as it was – but when the urge for the less fair sex arose, he’d drive to Somerset or Lexington and indulge it. Figured he was born to get the most of everything and everyone around him. 

But he didn’t look at any of the men in prison, ignored contraband porn and female volunteers who got discussed lasciviously once they left. Leading a flock gave him a convenient excuse to stay celibate, talk about purity and the sanctity of marriage. Really, though, the thought of being touched made him feel sick. 

He wanted Ava. He wanted her hands, her kisses, her breathing in bed next to him. She was supposed to be _it_ , for richer or poorer, co-conspirators or betrayers, ‘til death do us–

When he finally ended his eight year dry spell with a beautiful red haired woman at a cheap motel in Missouri, he thought he’d break down. The panic attack never came, neither did the crushing guilt. In Texas, so close to where Ava met her end, in bed with a man who had even more questionable tattoos than him, he found himself getting _bored_. 

He knew he was more numb than he used to be. Maybe he was just flat broken. 

It took ten seconds grinding against Raylan Givens with enough enthusiasm to bend the man backwards over his kitchen sink to confirm that no, he wasn’t. 

Raylan’s hands are sliding up his back, under his t-shirt. The metal ridge of the gun still in his hand digs into his spine. Boyd is _so_ mad and _so_ turned on all at once, like a switch flipped. He feels dizzy. He feels like he’s waking up.

“Drop that goddamn pea-shooter,” he hisses. Raylan doesn’t, not exactly. Still kissing Boyd like they’ve been doing it every day since they were twelve, he stares him straight in the eye, pulls Boyd’s gun out of his waistband, and throws them both across the room. 

He’s still got good aim. Would’ve made a hell of a baseball player.

It’s a challenge. _If that’s all you were after, get your mouth off me and run for it. See who gets there first._

“You’re a petty man, Raylan.” Boyd says, and bites down on his bottom lip. 

They both stumble, half to the ground. Raylan’s arm wraps around his waist on reflex, catching him. It makes him half-hard and furious at the same. Every part of his body that’s touched Raylan’s tingles. 

“We’re a little too old for doing it on the floor, ain’t we?” Raylan says. Boyd responds by knocking his hat off with a flick of his index finger.

“Hop on up that counter, then.”

Raylan ignores this, grabs his hips too hard and walks Boyd backwards until they hit the table. Literally. He attempts to shove Boyd up onto the surface and just bangs his tailbone. Revenge for his lip, maybe. 

“Asshole.” Boyd hoists himself up, lays down flat on his back. He has to do everything himself. Raylan clamors up on top of him, through, and the irritation fades a little. He’s propping himself up on his elbows and knees, heat radiating off his skin. 

He kisses Boyd, and Boyd cranes his neck up, rising to meet his mouth, because he can talk all day long about being the leader of a chosen flock but he has always been a worshipper at heart. 

Raylan breaks away to unbutton his shirt, loosen his belt. Boyd pulls his t-shirt halfway over his head before he remembers his latest vows, how his pathetic post-Ava encounters barely got his jeans far enough down to get the job done. 

But Raylan’s tugging at the neck of the fabric like it doesn’t even occur to him why he’s hesitating. Raylan thinks Boyd’s got nothing left to hide from him. 

“C’mere, stop fidgeting,” he mumbles, pressing another kiss into the soft spot where Boyd’s neck sloped into his shoulder. Boyd’s legs jerk up, like a mallet struck, and he presses Raylan in tight between his legs. Raylan rears back, a hand on each of his kneecaps, and pushes them apart, spreading Boyd’s legs like a ten-dollar whore. 

And Boyd lets him. But not without curling his fingers in that pretty hair and tugging him back down for another kiss. 

They made time together a handful of nights, back when they dug coal. They weren’t each other’s first _anything_ by that point, but they were young and buzzed on the adrenaline of making it back to the surface every day and the anger that their lives had sent them down there in the first place. So they would fuck, quick and half-dressed and always in the woods or the bed of his truck. Always in the dark. All these years, they've never actually been naked for each other.

Harlan swagger is not the same thing as bravery. 

It’s better now, to kiss long and slow, nudge his own tongue against Raylan’s. Gives him something to focus on besides his heart starting to pound. Raylan kicking off his boots, getting their pants down with a lot more confidence than they used to. 

“Gonna fuck me like a man, now?” Boyd says, trying not to grit his teeth as Raylan licks his fingers and uses the middle one to start opening Boyd up. It’s still too dry, it _hurts_ , but he’s not gonna give Raylan the satisfaction of a wince. 

“Don’t know if you can handle a real man, Boyd,” Raylan says, eyes narrowing, a smirk still on his lips. He pushes a second finger in, then a third, and Boyd forces his body to relax. The pain lowers into a dull burn. 

They rub against each other like that for a few minutes, Raylan screwing Boyd with his long, calloused fingers, Boyd's knee jumping with every quick twist. He can’t pull himself together enough for a snappy retort, so he just nips at Raylan’s earlobe. He’s rewarded with Raylan’s free hand drifting down to lazily stroke Boyd’s cock. 

“I had known this is all it took to shut you up…”

They’re too old for sex on a table. He can feel his back seizing as Raylan’s hips flex against his, his cock hitting _that place_ deep inside him. It’s good enough to breathe through the twinge. He wraps his legs around Raylan’s legs, left heel digging into his ass. He hums into Boyd’s mouth, a big, warm hand clutching his bicep, almost covering the spiky dark tattoo.

Fuck, if he’d gotten fucked like this back in the holler, he would’ve never let Raylan go. He probably wouldn’t have the swastika. His brain, always going faster than the rest of the room, flashes through a whole life with this man in his arms, less gunshot scars on his chest, less years in an orange jumpsuit, less pain taking over his entire being because he didn’t lose a great love of his life, let alone both of them _._

Raylan’s thrusts have become shallower. He’s squinting down at Boyd, the second cousin of concern on his face. He buries his face in the crook of Raylan’s neck and hangs on tighter.

“Need an engraved invitation to get a man off?” It’s muffled, but Raylan picks up the pace. It doesn’t take long until he exhales sharply through his teeth, coming inside Boyd. 

“Goddamn,” he says, pressing an absentminded kiss into Boyd’s hairline. 

He’s close to the edge himself, cock straining against his stomach, but he can’t lift his head, can’t stop clinging to Raylan like a life raft. 

“Boyd? Boyd.” Raylan tries for commanding on the second iteration of his name – like that’s ever worked – but he still doesn’t move. He is not in control, he’s not moving until he is. Raylan reaches between them and wraps a hand around the base of Boyd’s dick, stroking him off with typical silence. He comes in Raylan’s hand with a shudder.

He catches his breath, finally.

Raylan pulls out of him with strange gentleness, grabs a dishrag off the kitchen counter to clean them both up. “You got better at all this.”

“Nah, we were always pretty good at fightin' and screwin', Raylan.” He wipes his eyes quickly with his thumb. He swings his legs over the edge of the table, feeling boneless and exhausted, and works his jeans back up his legs. Raylan sits next to him, their toes brushing against the floor. It’s finally dark outside. "I know you can’t tell me where Ava’s grave is.”

Raylan reaches down to the floor and scoops up Boyd’s t-shirt, tosses it at him.

“I know _why_.” He's pretty good at thinking while screwing, too.

Raylan hops off the table with more ease than he probably feels, walks across the room to retrieve both their guns. He hears the safeties click. 

Boyd puts his shirt back on. He could leave, right now. Find another gun. Find another state. Plan out some kind of elaborate revenge. 

“What are you doing tomorrow?” He asks as Raylan comes back into the kitchen. He hasn’t dressed yet, not that Boyd’s complaining. 

“Why? You planning on another ambush?”

Boyd rubs his face with open palms. “In approximately three hours, it’s gon’ be Saturday. What do upstanding citizens such as yourself do on Saturdays?” 

Raylan chuckles, his smile bright and loose like it hasn't been in memory. “I don’t know. Sleep, laundry. Maybe a bad movie.”

Boyd nods, rubs his face again. He’s still so angry. But it’s less raw, more settled in his bones. It’s the kind he can walk around with. “Sleep, now that's a concept.” 

Raylan nods down the hall, towards his room. There’s that nonverbal communication, again. Those guns are locked up somewhere in the living room.

He’ll stay tonight, under cool sheets, listen to Raylan Givens breathe, see what constitutes a bad movie to someone with his abominable taste. He’ll give it a day. See if he really wants to kill him. If he doesn't, maybe he’ll give it another one. 

There’s air in his lungs again.


End file.
